7/21/07

Harper, on his Latin American swing this week, pointedly referred to it: "What I see is a growing concern of Canadians, and of the burden we are carrying and the level of Canadian casualties."

He added: "I understand the pain and I understand the difficulties that this causes the Canadian population, and that's the real controversy."

In other words, he is feeling the political heat. A Strategic Counsel poll yesterday shows the Tories sliding into a dead heat with the Liberals at 31 per cent, and falling to a distant third place behind the Bloc Quebecois and Liberals in Quebec, where the Afghan mission is highly unpopular. The deployment of 2,000 Quebec troops in the middle of the summer will only call more attention to the mission.

Harper is now clearly saying while Canada will fulfill its commitment to February 2009, the government will not extend the mission in Kandahar without the support of other parties in the House.

Since the Liberals are calling for an end to the mission in 2009, and the NDP oppose it altogether, that's simply not going to happen.

In essence, although Harper hasn't said so, he is giving notice to NATO that Canada wants to be relieved in Kandahar in 2009.

bush has fucked himself everywhere. Nobody wants anything to do with his war games anymore because bush doesn't have a clue how AND WHEN wars should be fought. Both Afghanistan and Iraq's rapidly deteriorating situations have proven that.

But now, along with the endless occupation in Iraq, the US Military will have the extra task of picking up the slack in Afghanistan if Canada starts to pull out. All total that would be another 2500 troops that would have to be sent to Afghanistan if the Canadians pulled out.

Before withdrawing its 480 combat troops from Iraq next month, Denmark is pulling out about a dozen Iraqi interpreters and their families.

The translators have worked with the Danes in the southern city of Basra, a risky job that has turned them into traitors in the eyes of militants fighting the U.S.-led coalition. The government decided in June to offer all the interpreters working for Danish forces a chance to seek asylum.

The United States and Britain have been reluctant to accept large numbers of Iraqi asylum-seekers - including those who worked for their military or civilian operations. The Danish move came only after months of heated debate.

Any help from the Brits on this problem of the Coalition of the Thinning?

The head of the Army has issued a dire warning that Britain has almost run out of troops to defend the country or fight abroad, a secret document obtained by the Daily Telegraph has revealed.

Gen Sir Richard Dannatt has told senior commanders that reinforcements for emergencies or for operations in Iraq or Afghanistan are "now almost non-existent".

In the memorandum to fellow defence leaders, the Chief of the General Staff (CGS) confessed that "we now have almost no capability to react to the unexpected". The "undermanned" Army now has all its units committed to either training for war in Iraq and Afghanistan, on leave or on operations.

Things are sucking everywhere you look if you are an American soldier.

“President Bush will undergo a routine colonoscopy Saturday, and will transfer power to Vice President Dick Cheney during the procedure, expected to take about two and a half hours, the chief White House spokesman said.”

The terror alert for the entire world skyrocketed to maximum as one of the most criminal of all of the White House administration members, and one of the most ardent supporters of the warmongering neocon ideology, takes charge of the military. The military cheney desperately wants to unleash on Iran in order to ensure the continued failed policies of the neocons into the distant future.

If this isn't alarming enough to set the impeachment gears into motion, on overdrive, then God help this country.

• Bush now has had both the highest approval rating in Gallup's history -- 90% in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks -- and one of the lowest. Among modern presidents, only Richard Nixon, Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter ever had a lower rating.

Pollster.com, writing before the approval number was released, was just about dead right about what it would be: "We should expect Gallup to fall between 29% and 31%, given current trends and Gallup's typical house effect," Charles Franklin wrote at the site yesterday. The "trend" in polling puts the president's approval rating at 27.9% if you look at a cross-section of surveys, he says.

Does the conventional wisdom that impeachment would be politically radioactive still hold true in the post-Libby commutation political world? A new poll from American Research Group shows a startling result: The people are evenly divided on impeachment proceedings against the president, and a majority favor the House beginning impeachment proceedings against Vice President Cheney.

Do you favor or oppose the US House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush?

Favor

Oppose

Undecided

All Adults

45%

46%

9%

Voters

46%

44%

10%

Do you favor or oppose the US House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against Vice President Dick Cheney?

Favor

Oppose

Undecided

All Adults

54%

40%

6%

Voters

50%

44%

6%

Among independents, 50% favor starting impeachment proceedings against President Bush, to only 30% opposed. And 51% of independents are also for starting impeachment proceedings against Dick Cheney, to 29% opposed.

On July 13, 2007, I visited Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, where the bodies of American soldiers killed in Iraq were freshly interred. Afterwards, I headed across the street to the Sheraton National Hotel, owned by right-wing Korean cult leader Sun Myung-Moon, to meet some of the war's most fervent supporters at the College Republican National Convention.

In conversations with at least twenty College Republicans about the war in Iraq, I listened as they lip-synched discredited cant about "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here." Many of the young GOP cadres I met described the so-called "war on terror" as nothing less than the cause of their time.

We're supposed to be on the way home right now. We were supposed to be flying home in six days. Six days. But because we have people up there in Congress with the brain of a two-year old who don't know what they're doing. They don't experience it. I, I challenge the President or whoever has us here for fifteen months to ride along, alongside me. I'll do another fifteen months if he comes out here and rides along with me every day for fifteen months. I'll do fifteen more months. They don't even have to pay me extra. I just want him to come out here and ride with me another fifteen months.

The politicians all sit there in their cushy offices or their comfy little places on the floor of the House, The Senate, and in the White House. They do not have a fucking clue what they are doing to the soldiers. They do not have a fucking clue how stressed out the military is. How the policies they are all pushing for are breaking the military.

YOU all say YOU support the troops. What a fucking load of crap. If YOU aren't there in Iraq along side them in this endless war that YOU support...

Don't ever fucking tell me YOU support the troops.

That goes for all of you war cheerleaders, Republican and Democratic party alike, that continue to fund this endless disaster. The same thing goes for all of you keyboard and armchair warriors that cheer on the occupation of Iraq but are too hypocritical to spill your own blood in Iraq's desert sands.

Basra, Iraq – On Monday, hundreds of Iraqis, led by the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU), took to the streets of Basra to demand that the Iraqi Parliament reject the proposed Oil Law. [1]

Simultaneous demonstrations took place in Amara and Nassiryya. Local governate officials made statements in support of the demonstration and, along with the governor of Basra, have committed to sending letters to the Minister of Oil supporting the Union’s demands.

Hassan Juma’a Awad al Assadi, President of the IFOU, charges that the proposed Oil Law surrenders Iraq’s economic sovereignty to multinational oil companies: “‘We will lose control over Iraqi oil. Therefore, the social progress in Iraq will be curtailed substantially, because the oil companies want huge profits; they are not concerned about the environment, wages, or living conditions…” The IFOU calls for immediate and complete withdrawal of all foreign forces from Iraq. The union represents 26,000 members in 10 state oil and gas companies across four governorates in the south of Iraq.

The Union was moved to public protest after initiating a strike on June 4, 2007 over a range of workplace issues and in opposition to the proposed Oil Law. IFOU leaders have said their members are prepared to strike again in defense of their nationalized oil industry. Iraq’s oil has been in the public sector since the 1970s.

Oh yeah... It is those "Iraq Constitution changes" they keep talking about that have everything to do with stealing their oil, and nothing to do with spreading freedom or Democracy.

Almost exactly two months ago, I wrote that Democrats need a Mr. Smith - someone, anyone in the Senate to shut the institution down in order to force Congress to respect the will of the American people and start ending the war in Iraq. Now, Democrats don't even need Mr. Smith-style bravery - they need only to force the Republicans to filibuster the effort to end the war.

Yes, that's right - Democrats have the power to make the Republican Party stand up on the floor of the Senate, and shut the government down in order to continue the Iraq War, if that's what the GOP wants to do. Miles Mogulescu at the Huffington Post explains:

In recent decades, there has been a "gentleman's agreement" that old-fashioned filibusters are no longer required: If 41 Senators block a vote, the Majority Leader just moves on to other business. Where once the filibuster was reserved for matters of national importance where a minority stood on principle, now the ease of filibustering has made it routine...Majority Leader Reid has the power, however, to ignore the "gentleman's" agreement and force an old-fashioned filibuster. Republican Minority Leader Bill Frist did this in 2003, forcing the Democrats to stage a real filibuster against the nomination of right-wing judge Miguel Estrada.

So, folks, here we are again, asking whether Democrats are going to use the power the public gave them in the 2006 election specifically to fulfill their election promises to end the war. The country is tired of Democrats' Innocent Bystander Fable (see the video above for what I mean). Nobody outside of Washington, D.C. believes - nor should they believe - that Democrats don't have the power to end the war, or must have 60 votes in order to end the war. Nobody believes those excuses because they are as dishonest and destructive as President Bush telling us Iraq had WMD.

But Iraq is about the oil, and the democratic party is using the occupation as much as bush is. Bush and the GOP uses it to spread fear and divide the nation, BUT the Dems are using it as a means to get control of the White House. And they both use it all as a means to get to the oil.

I stayed up until until about 3 o'clock listening to the debate on the floor.

I just wish the Dems would filibuster EVERYTHING to stop Congress all together until they get the Republicans to stop filibustering votes on pulling out. They may as well. What they are doing hasn't done anything to change things. All it takes is 40 Dems to stop Congress in its tracks and end the war.

This video was made with audio, video, photographs, and scans of court documents on June 25, 2007, in Jena, Louisiana.

In September 2006, a group of African American high school students in Jena, Louisiana, asked the school for permission to sit beneath a "whites only" shade tree. There was an unwritten rule that blacks couldn't sit beneath the tree. The school said they didn't care where students sat. The next day, students arrived at school to see three nooses (in school colors) hanging from the tree.

The boys who hung the nooses were suspended from school for a few days. The school administration chalked it up as a harmless prank, but Jena's black population didn't take it so lightly. Fights and unrest started breaking out at school. The District Attorney, Reed Walters, was called in to directly address black students at the school and told them all he could "end their life with a stroke of the pen."

Black students were assaulted at white parties. A white man drew a loaded rifle on three black teens at a local convenience store. (They wrestled it from him and ran away.) Someone tried to burn down the school, and on December 4th, a fight broke out that led to six black students being charged with attempted murder. To his word, the D.A. pushed for maximum charges, which carry sentences of eighty years. Four of the six are being tried as adults (ages 17 & 18) and two are juveniles.

Yesterday, I was in Jena for the first day of the trial for Mychal Bell, one of the Jena Six. The D.A., perhaps in response to public pressure, tried to get Bell to cop a plea. Bell refused, and today, jury selection began. After today, we'll know whether or not the case will be tried in front of an all-white jury. Jena's 85-percent white, and it remains to be seen whether or not the six can get a fair trial.

Both off-the-record and on, Jena residents told me racism is alive and well in Louisiana, and this is a case where it rose above the levee, so to speak.

Update: Mychal Bell, the first of the Jena Six to face trial, was found guilty of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit the same on June 28th. A comprehensive look at the case, the trial and the verdict was published on July 2nd at friendsofjustice.

I'll keep this simple. There is no way to "win" when there is no game afoot -- a crime cannot be "won." It can only be "gotten away with" or stopped.

Our involvement in Iraq is a crime, not a war. It is not an attempt to bring democracy, nor an attempt to free the Iraqi people, nor an attempt to remove WMDs. It never was. Those were just the attempts to put an acceptable face on it, in order to provide justification for the most abominable, bold-faced and heinous crime of the twenty-first century.

For those who are in a position and who have the responsibility to act to end this, there is only thing to remember:

You don't "win" a crime.

You can stop it, or you are complicit in and an accessory to the crime.

Go on and read the rest. Even if you can't win a war crime, it is just as hard to get Congress to admit that they are accessories in bushies war crimes as long as they continue to fund this illegal invasion and occupation in Iraq.

Meanwhile, as the GOP obstructionists get set for this little overnight filibuster, what is Joe neocon Lieberman doing? He is out here using soldiers as PROPS on the very day he plans to join another GOP effort to stab soldiers in the back:

But she says she stopped believing in the war last month after a telephone conversation with him.

“He started telling me that he doesn’t want me to go and do the things he has been doing,” said Corporal Ponce De Leon, 22, speaking by telephone as she boxed up her belongings in their apartment near Camp Lejeune, N.C.

“He said that ‘we have all decided that it’s time for us to go home.’ I said, ‘You mean go home and rest?’ And he said, ‘I mean go home and not go back.’

“This is from someone who has been training for the past nine years to go to combat and who has spent his whole life wanting to be a marine,” she continued. “That’s when I realized I couldn’t support the war anymore, even though I will follow my orders.”

We're supposed to be on the way home right now. We were supposed to be flying home in six days. Six days. But because we have people up there in Congress with the brain of a two-year old who don't know what they're doing. They don't experience it. I, I challenge the President or whoever has us here for fifteen months to ride along, alongside me. I'll do another fifteen months if he comes out here and rides along with me every day for fifteen months. I'll do fifteen more months. They don't even have to pay me extra. I just want him to come out here and ride with me another fifteen months.

The politicians all sit there in their cushy offices or their comfy little places on the floor of the House, The Senate, and in the White House. They do not have a fucking clue what they are doing to the soldiers. They do not have a fucking clue how stressed out the military is. How the policies they are all pushing for are breaking the military.

It is pretty plain and simple. You either support the troops by bringing them home... Or you don't support the troops at all. Cut and dry. There are no shades of gray in this.

When soldiers come right out and tell you shit like this it is a serious matter. They must have absolutely no confidence in their leadership or the mission they are being given if they are willing to risk the penalties of speaking out against their orders.

Military Families Speak Out, one such group, which was started in the fall of 2002, now has about 3,500 member families. About 500 of them have joined since January.

Nancy Lessin, a founder of the group, said it was noteworthy that about a hundred military wives living on bases had joined in the last three months. Wives living on bases, she said, are more reluctant than parents of soldiers to speak out.

For Beth Pyritz, 27, who recently joined the group, the turning point came last month when her husband, an Army specialist, left for Iraq for his third deployment.

So it seems that it is going to be up to Congress to actually support the troops by ending the bushies' authorization to wage endless wars. bush won't do it. He never has supported the troops. It remains to be seen if Congress can finally do the right thing here.

After remaining in seclusion since his telephone number turned up last week in the records of an escort service in Washington, D.C., Senator David Vitter will make a public statement this afternoon at the Sheraton Galleria in Metairie.

snip

Vitter has not responded to allegations which resurfaced last week that he was a regular customer of a prostitute who went by the name of Wendy Cortez when he was a state representative in the late 1990s. He has previously denied that allegation.

He also did not respond to claims by a local madam that he had been a customer at her Mid-City brothel around the same time.

"We're supposed to be on the way home right now. We were supposed to be flying home in six days. Six days. But because we have people up there in Congress with the brain of a two-year old who don't know what they're doing. They don't experience it. I, I challenge the President or whoever has us here for fifteen months to ride along, alongside me. I'll do another fifteen months if he comes out here and rides along with me every day for fifteen months. I'll do fifteen more months. They don't even have to pay me extra. I just want him to come out here and ride with me another fifteen months."

The politicians all sit there in their cushy offices or their comfy little places on the floor of the House, The Senate, and in the White House. They do not have a fucking clue what they are doing to the soldiers. They do not have a fucking clue how stressed out the military is. How the policies they are all pushing for are breaking the military.

YOU all say YOU support the troops. What a fucking load of crap. If YOU aren't there in Iraq along side them in this endless war that YOU support...

Don't ever fucking tell me YOU support the troops.

That goes for all of you war cheerleaders, Republican and Democratic party alike, that continue to fund this endless disaster. The same thing goes for all of you keyboard and armchair warriors that cheer on the occupation of Iraq but are too hypocritical to spill your own blood in Iraq's desert sands.

August 11 is the date for the Iowa GOP presidential "straw poll." In this "straw poll" Republican voters from all over Iowa will walk, drive, or share a bus to the campus of Iowa State University where they will be allowed to pay $35 each for the honor of casting a ballot for their choice for President.

This "poll" is semi-important within the world of Republican politics. Both McCain and Giuliani have decided to pass and will not participate. However, for the candidates who are lower down in the polls this "straw poll" may be all important. The supporters of Dr. Ron Paul, for instance, claim that he has thousands of supporters within the state and that they are going to do all they can to get them to Ames.

With all of that the supporters of Paul have got another gripe and concern that sounds much like the same concern many in the Election Integrity community have; the poll, which used to be done on paper ballots, hand-counted in public, will be conducted on Diebold Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines.

7/15/07

I want everyone to think about this little quote from Crooks and Liars for a moment:

What will Bush say about this LA Times report? “Sunni extremists from Saudi Arabia make up half the foreign fighters in Iraq, many suicide bombers, a U.S. official says.”

Most estimates of the foreign insurgents in Iraq that I have read from the military put their numbers at 2% to 4% of the total insurgency. We'll take the high number as the example here and assume that it is 4%.

We now learn that half of them are from Saudi Arabia. Take away 2%... Which leaves us with 2% of the insurgents that are from various other countries. Just think about how little influence Iran has in Iraq. It has been proven time and time again that the supposed "arms links" are completely bogus. (You know? The propaganda arms connections that Joe neocon Lieberman is always screeching about...) And now that we are learning that half of the foreign insurgents are from Saudi Arabia, Joe's answer is to bomb Iran? Forgive me if I laugh in your face.

Bear in mind that most of the 911 hijackers were Saudies, and most of the money going into Iraq to fund the insurgency traces back to... You guessed it! Saudi Arabia. And now, half of the foreign insurgents are from Saudi Arabia too.

And the neocon wetdream is to bomb Iran?

Recently the criminally warmongering idiotocracy in Washington has even tried to say that Iran was behind the kidnapping of some American soldiers. When the investigation was finished all that was proven was that it was Iraqi policemen and insurgents that had taken part in and planned that insurgent operation. In otherwords, some people were flat out lying to the American people.

According to a U.S. Army investigation, the Iraqi Police assisted a brazen January assault on U.S. troops in the southern city of Karbala -- an attack that a U.S. military spokesman tied to Iranian operatives earlier this month.

USA Today obtained a copy of the Army's February 27 report. The report found that the Karbala policemen exploited "a level of trust" that U.S. commanders placed with them to provide security for a provincial headquarters where a contingent of soldiers were stationed. In the assault, one of the most sophisticated on U.S. troops to date, gunmen passed themselves off as part of a U.S. security team and entered the compound past police checkpoints, eventually killing five soldiers.

USA Today reports that in advance of the attack, Iraqi police abandoned their stations, as did Iraqi civilian employees of the compound's PX. The gunmen exhibited signs of knowing how U.S. forces would defend themselves under attack, and used that apparent knowledge to pin down and abduct soldiers and officers.

According to Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, the Iranian government has been using the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah to train and organize Iraqi extremists, who are responsible in turn for the murder of American service members.

Gen. Bergner also revealed that the Quds Force -- a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps whose mission is to finance, arm and equip foreign Islamist terrorist movements -- has taken groups of up to 60 Iraqi insurgents at a time and brought them to three camps near Tehran, where they have received instruction in the use of mortars, rockets, improvised explosive devices and other deadly tools of guerrilla warfare that they use against our troops. Iran has also funded its Iraqi proxies generously, to the tune of $3 million a month.

Based on the interrogation of captured extremist leaders -- including a 24-year veteran of Hezbollah, apparently dispatched to Iraq by his patrons in Tehran -- Gen. Bergner also reported on Monday that the U.S. military has concluded that "the senior leadership" in Iran is aware of these terrorist activities. He said it is "hard to imagine" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- Iran's supreme leader -- does not know of them.

Except it turns out that that '24-year veteran of Hezbollah' was Gen. Bergner's source for the Karbala attack. Bergner was either lying through his teeth, duped, or 100% wrong. Pity the fools that listen to a word the neo-cons say

Just look at the evidence of the propaganda that the bush criminals are illegally tossing at you in a steady stream of BS:

Austrian Rifles via Iran?: Another Crock

An extremely well-informed observer sent me this comment on the story that Iran is sending high-powered Austrian rifles to Iraqi Shiites. Like the whole USG story about Iran supplying deadly weapons to dangerous Shiite militias, this one turns out to be riddled with falsehoods.

The original article about Austrian rifles in Iraq appeared in the Daily Telegraph and is full of inconsistencies. For instance they say that the US found 100 of these rifles in Iraq and 170 American and Coalition troops have been killed by that weapon.

The April convoy was tracked from Iran into Helmand province and led a fierce firefight that destroyed one vehicle, according to the official analysis. A second vehicle was reportedly found to contain small arms ammunition, mortar rounds and more than 650 pounds of C4 demolition charges.

A second convoy of two vehicles was spotted on May 3 and led to the capture of five occupants and the seizure of RPG-7mm rockets and more than 1,000 pounds of C4, the analysis says.

It strikes me as odd that Afghanistan's Helmand Province is along the Pakistani border, where you would be more likely to find "Taliban allies," yet they are saying it is arms shipments from Iran. It strikes me twice as odd given previous claims like this that have been discredited in the past. (DLiNM)

Perpetuating the PowerPoint Lies

The White House was told twice to redo the Powerpoint presentation purporting Iranian ties to American deaths. According to The National Journal the intelligence community demanded that the presentation be rewritten and washed of overstated claims:

At least twice in the past month, the White House has delayed a PowerPoint presentation initially prepared by the military to detail evidence of suspected Iranian materiel and financial support for militants in Iraq. The presentation was to have been made at a press conference in Baghdad in the first week of February. Officials have set no new date, but they say it could be any day.

Even as U.S. officials in Baghdad were ready to make the case, administration principals in Washington who were charged with vetting the PowerPoint dossier bowed to pressure from the intelligence community and ordered that it be scrubbed again.

This still wasn't enough scrubbing top get the facts straight and so some of the misinformation still persists. The NewsTimes provides one of the many arguments to support Murtha's plan to require fully trained and EQUIPED American soldiers before they can be deployed in theater:

News Times Live Editorial:"Almost four years later, the armor problems remain. It's not a matter of money; it's a matter of planning.

This week, the Pentagon admitted that there is a shortage of armor to protect troops involved in the president's so-called 'surge' that will add more than 20,000 American military personnel to the Iraq war.

The president spent part of Wednesday's news conference alleging that Iran is supplying new deadly weapons to Iraqi insurgents. But what is he doing to require that American troops have the armor they need to protect themselves against these new weapons?

Known as 'explosively formed penetrators,' these weapons are now inflicting 70 percent of the American casualties in Iraq."

Yes the armor problems still remain, but so does the misinformation campaign that the lying Bush administartion intended to seed in the news. There are two major problems with the "evidence" supplied by the military and the Bush administration.

1. About 170 out of the over 3000 American deaths are POSSIBLY attributable to the Iranian supported Shia militias. Why? Because that is the total number killed by all shite in that time. A drop in the bucket. And certainly not all of the US forces killed by Shia insurgents are not all linked to Iran. The vast MAJORITYof the IED's and other weapons used to kill Americans are planted or used by the Sunnis. A group that Iran does not support. However, Saudi Arabia sends truckloads full of money to the Sunnis is Iraq, the Sunnis that are largely responsible for the most deaths and injuries of American soldiers in Iraq. I don't think the Sunnis are buying cakes and cookies with that Saudi money.

2. Some of the weapons that the military showed as evidence of being supplied by Iran had markings written in English. Iranians mark weapons they manufacture in Farsi, although, Pakistan manufactures the same/similar weapons and marks them in English. Other weapons, like EFPs, that are purported to be too sophisticated to have been made by the Shia or the Sunnis, and therefore "must be coming from Iran", are similar to weapons that many other groups like Hezbollah and the IRA have made in the past, according to Middle East expert Juan Cole. (Scroll down, click on the Juan Cole video)

The Danbury NewsTimes bit on the EFPs lie, and blaming Iran. As noble as the real thrust of the Editorial may be, it is still perpetuating Bush propaganda.

The evidence clearly points to countries that are known supporters and financiers of the Sunnis (IE: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc.) and/or just the easy spreading of information on typically used weapons amongst terrorism groups everywhere. And just whose name pops up to reenforce this manipulation of inteligence?

U.S. military commanders in Iraq have shown members of Congress explosive devices that bear Iranian markings as evidence Tehran is supplying Iraqi militants with bombs, a senior U.S. government official said Saturday.

One of the lawmakers, independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, said he has seen some of the evidence, though he would not be specific. “I’m convinced from what I’ve seen that the Iranians are supplying and are giving assistance to the people in Iraq who are killing American soldiers,” said Lieberman, who was attending an international security conference in Munich.

Against the inference that this all comes from Iran is the concept that Iraqis themselves would be capable of copying a design and therefore do not need to get bombs from Iran.

And there have been a number of news reports over the last year expressing scepticism, even among military personnel, about the link to Iran.

The Washington Post reported last October that British troops in the south doubted the claim.

A year ago, the London Times said that British officers in Basra had stopped making any such claim, saying only that the technology matched bomb-making found elsewhere in the Middle East, including Lebanon and Syria.

While reporters and news agencies across the country are starting to catch whiffs of Bush Neocon propaganda, and pointing out some of the stinkers, they are still missing some of the really BIG lies. And most of them relate to the Drumbeat for War with Iran that is just a repeat of Iraq lies all over again:

Much of the intelligence on Iran's nuclear facilities provided to UN inspectors by US spy agencies has turned out to be unfounded, diplomatic sources in Vienna said today.

The claims, reminiscent of the intelligence fiasco surrounding the Iraq war, coincided with a sharp increase in international tension as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran was defying a UN security council ultimatum to freeze its nuclear programme.

That report, delivered to the security council by the IAEA director general, Mohammed ElBaradei, sets the stage for a fierce international debate on the imposition of stricter sanctions on Iran and raises the possibility that the US could resort to military action against Iranian nuclear sites.

I'm just waiting for the fictitious mushroom clouds to start to reappear...(DLiNM)

Any and all of these lies and propaganda always seem to find a way out of Joe Lieberman's big gaping piehole at some time or another. Either Joe neocon Lieberman is taking part in a criminal act of spreading propaganda to be used against Americans OR he is the dumbest fuck in American politics that is being duped again and again by his criminal bush pals.

Now, I have never underestimated Joe LIEberman's ability to lie, nor have I ever thought him to be particularly stupid, but allowing him the benefit of the doubt here I will ask him to clarify:

Which are you Joe? Dumb as fuck OR a criminal?

Not that I will necessarily believe your answer either way. But the simple fact remains that the evidence is piling up in the wake of your disastrous lies and propaganda actions. And we will make sure that you are held responsible for them.

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Larry Craig and David Vitter — “two United States Senators implicated in extramarital sexual activity” — have named themselves as co-sponsors of S.J. Res. 43, the Marriage Protection Amendment. If passed, the bill would amend the Constitution to declare that marriage “shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman.”